


Roused from a sleep in dark pools of blood and sin

by LadyHeliotrope



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Poetry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-19 09:33:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22508842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyHeliotrope/pseuds/LadyHeliotrope
Summary: From afar, he could hear the mellow blackbird call, rousing him from a sleep in dark pools of blood and sin. On hiatus.





	1. Chapter 1

**Opus IV**

**i.**

The way of the wizard child is a strange one;  
Power manifests in fulfillment of deep desires  
To talk to flower-fairies, to keep one's hair long.  
But time and age often quench the strongest of these fires.

Still there are moments when Christlike self-control,  
Born of necessity, swings to the other spectrum-side  
In a mature wizard or witch, who regresses to the role  
Of a child again, a victim of fight or flight and terrified.

For a person notoriously indulgent in extremes,  
Whose life-existence depended on his facades,  
And for whom death was a complexly nuanced dream,  
Such a reaction would facilitate avoiding morality, and God.

Thus it should have come without surprise to him  
That, from afar, he could hear the mellow blackbird call,  
Rousing him from a sleep in dark pools of blood and sin,  
A sleep where hollow, sweet, and clear visions enthralled.

The prince was first bewildered, then both relieved and enraged,  
For it was both a blessing and a curse to remain on earth.  
But his soul soon hosted greater fear, with which his sanity waged  
A battle as titanic as that of his unhappy parents at his birth.


	2. Chapter 2

ii.

In his sleep he must have flirted with death, and lost her favor  
And won instead the courtship of Adiona, who led him safely home  
To the time of his life when he knew joy in almost all of its flavors  
And left him in the Shrieking Shack, no longer battered, but alone.

Rip Van Winkle was not Snape; the mythic man's drowse aged him  
As natural and linear as the growth of a magnificent oak tree.  
Severus instead had lost the wizened lines of burdens grim  
That marked his face as one whose soul never was free.

Severus was a child again, and unnerved by this course of events  
He paced the floors (though his custom was with longer steps)  
Thinking why the gods gifted to a man whose life was full of laments  
A new chance at acquiring life, liberty, and happiness.

Was his new age a trick of the mind, an addle of the brain,  
One more unfunny joke with which the universe taunted his heart?  
Severus was as accustomed to these things as he was to rain.  
Even if it was a blessing, all he could do now was take part.

O for a sun to light his way home! Instead the moon crept upward  
And looked white through the window, turning visions of bushes  
Sitting plainly in the darkness, like stones in a floodplain unexplored  
Into witches with sleepy eyes, scarlet bud lips, and white faces.


	3. Chapter 3

**iii.**

In the dim solitude, his heart remembered tearlessly  
The beauty of a nymph who had vexed his soul's dark wood;  
Years when white winters were spent in Lily's company  
And the unquiet ghosts of dead and restless men did not haunt the world.

From the windows of Shrieking Shack, he watched  
The Hogwarts students shine with the ruddy enchanted wine  
Of youthful vigor and moonlight, and their sprightly walk  
Inspired in him a wish to be among them and connect to the divine.

"Here we should build a tomb," said one, "with grey and crooked bowers  
In this garden of thistledown and tares, with moss to green the stones.  
There we shall lay Titania, sometime this night, lulled in those flowers,  
Which will dance and delight her, a salve to her weary and dry bones."

Said her friend, "As much as twilight rain and long-leaved grass in the shadows  
May be beautiful to a lady whose bed-partners are the daughters of Hades,  
Titania does not fancy a place without nightingales, larks, or sparrows.  
No thank you, dear Jane, I will rest in a place where the living promenade."

Keen from his lair, the Slytherin spider leaned against the fragile pane of window,  
Pangs of longing in his child-body to join these teenage girls  
And receive the tender kisses they bestowed on each others' brows  
As he might from three older sisters, even though the loops and curls

Of their handwritten essays might blossom in lands far from the region of 'Outstanding'.  
As his students he knew their prosaic voices well, though their real ones less.  
He heard them now, and they were juvenile, unwittingly cruel, concerned with things  
That no daughter of Severus Snape would dare to ponder or confess.


	4. Chapter 4

iv.

He felt both pain and relief at being so distanced from their impish laughter,  
Watching them kept his judgmental thoughts from turning inward;  
There was nothing but a bully's glee in criticizing their conversation matter  
But such was the only ego-subsisting lift his drowning soul had in the world.

The voiceless Ravenclaw child was black in silence to her Hufflepuff mates,  
Who were hoping with hushed giggles that no soul would disturb them there.  
This girl seemed full of unease, and while the others arranged their game,  
Her dark eyes seemed to whisper dread, roaming until they met Severus' stare.

At first her face became as white as the sighing glare of the moon.  
Remorseful, desperate, her lips parted in a wordless appeal,  
Then cancelled their venture as she flew to attend her friend's rule,  
Only to return with decreasing fear as she saw he would stay concealed.

She seemed to regard him, as he looked out on their proceedings,  
Like a benevolent witness, and indeed she subtly communicated gratitude  
Without speaking. She did not recognize him, but seemed to be needing  
One who might see her reluctance and shame, one with a perspective of latitude.

She seemed to say to his open eyes, with the grief of the accursed,  
'Build me my tomb, within the dark yew tree, and in the autumn there,  
The yewberries will be golden lamps to burn for me,' her soul's mortality first  
On her mind that night, and Severus was the only one who wanted to hear. **  
**


	5. Chapter 5

v.

Maybe she gave her trust because she thought him a ghost; what else would a child be doing  
Looking out of the window of the haunted Shrieking Shack on young ladies,  
Who seemed to be making secret preparations for clandestine potions-brewing,  
With the calm aloofness of the undead and the longing of a slave to Hades?

It became clear why she sought the mercy of the only eyes to see their acts in place of her creator's,  
As the girls lit their cauldron on a mound of dry grass and slipped off their clothing.  
Their youthful curves were enchanting as they lay like dogs on their backs  
And they sang and writhed with the ancient secrets of Lilith, ecstatically moaning.

After the conclusion of three great tribal yells of vindication and glory,  
The Ravenclaw girl stood and read the contents of birchbark runes,  
With the gravity of knowing that participation would bind her to eternal fury  
But the willingness to proceed despite such formidable doom.

_O come you out, O come you out,_

_Wake, wake, lovely white soul of the night!_

_The singing mouse sings plaintively,_

_The sweet night-bird in the chesnut-tree—_

_They sing together, bird and mouse,_

_In starlight, at sunrise, lonely, sweet,_

_The wild notes and the faint notes meet—_

_O come you out, O come you out,_

_Wake, wake, lovely white soul of the night!_

_Amid the lilies floats the moth,_

_The mole along his galleries goeth_

_In the dark earth; the summer moon_

_Looks like a shepherd through the pane_

_Seeking his feeble lamb again—_

_O come you out, O come you out,_

_Wake, wake, lovely white soul of the night!_

There the other girls rose from the ground, dust-covered and red with sweat  
To each place an object inside the cauldron: one a textbook, one a scarf, one a quill.  
Their brew bubbled with the smell of potent virility and sang with the harmony of a duet  
That the girls returned with open voices as the potion began to quiet and distill.


	6. Chapter 6

vi.

The raven who had sacrificed her dignity was praised by the Hufflepuff lambs  
For her performance in their ritual, which was nearly done, and she bore a graceful smile  
Until they turned away, clutching their clothes to their naked bosoms,  
And she caught Severus' glance again, whereupon she turned pale.

Her head was weighed with shame, and her limbs began to shake  
As though she knew what _he_ knew about her...that her motive was to feel human.  
Perhaps, like he had, she surrounded herself with friends who were fake  
And with whom she shared nothing, simply because otherwise, there was no one.

There was no rest for the wicked, and wicked she surely was, as a liar.  
More was still to be done to fulfill this unholy obligation to complete the brew.  
So the other girls begged her to gather more weeds and flare up the fire  
For they were cold, and the potion had lost its boil anyway, so what could she do?

She gave him a shrug of resignation, returning to the burden,  
Knowing full well she had wrought the gilded cage around her for herself.  
Soon the time for leisure was over, and she hurried to fill an earthen  
Urn with her spit and hairs pulled from her head, and then to stir the pot she knelt.

Her companions gave of their personals as well, disposing of all in the cauldron  
And they let their breaths hitch and their sighs echo in the still night air,  
The chill of which was less with the approaching, heavy glow of dawn.  
Severus, being a child, was becoming restless at sitting there.


	7. Chapter 7

vii.

So he lay upon the floor of the dingy Shrieking Shack, alone,  
To rest his eyes a moment, when he heard the three nymphs scream  
In horror and delight, and the land shook, and Severus was thrown  
Against the wall, and what he saw outside recalled some terrible dreams.

Rising from the cauldron with the figure of Adonis was a novel rarity,  
Svelte, strong, and handsome, with his joyful smile and sensitive grin  
Was one that Snape recognized as that of one Cedric Diggory  
Though for his gentle prowess he might have been Iseult's Tristan.

He wore no trousers, shoes, or coat, but the girls paid this no mind;  
They had achieved what they desired, and like the priestesses of Dionysus,  
With wildness they wrested him from the fire, with the ferocity of the Bacchae,  
Crazed with desire for their docile Frankenstein, who smiled at their lust.

The manifestation of the long-dead hero had captured their imaginations;  
Upon the ground they lay, their tiger-lily fingers testing their supple prize.  
Even the Ravenclaw girl, for all her reluctance, seemed to have lost her inhibitions  
As she opened her mouth to sing, Apollo having touched the strings between her thighs.


	8. Chapter 8

viii.

Satiated, she rolled away as her companions sought the attentions of their creature  
To stop rather near the fence of the old house, guarded by tares and weeds.  
In some time she rose, composed once more, while her friends yelled in rapture  
Only to, with ginger steps and tender dressing, over the fence proceed.

With the certainty of recognition at closer quarters, Severus prayed a moment  
That his black, now oversized clothes would serve to hide him in the darkness.  
Hiding his head and tightly in a corner, his remembered wand extended,  
He feared what she might think when she saw and knew his likeness.

No words said she as she circled the house, searching for a door  
By which to enter, but there was no portal whose handle she might try,  
For locking up the transformed Remus Lupin had been the wise intent of Dumbledore.  
But the girl did not know this, and soon her fairy footfalls eased to silence in a gentle sigh.

She then returned to her companions, for she was the capable person  
Who had been given the task of leader in this morbid, frenzied, Dionysian epic  
To call forth from the dead some person, for whom her friends had fierce and  
Unquenchable passions as vehement and unresolvable as the forest thick.

The cauldron called for her attentions with embers scarlet and dying,  
And she went to minister to it while Titania and Jane lay on the ground with Diggory,  
Their naked bodies full and unstill as they sought to quell the forces of unbearable yearning  
While their Ravenclaw friend stirred the fire and refreshed their witches' brew of glory.

**Author's Note:**

> Fanfiction Writers and (non)Celebrities: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things?? Let's Find Out!  
> [Tumblr](https://lady-heliotrope-writes.tumblr.com/)  
> [Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/ladyheliotrope)


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